Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Month: May 2010 Page 1 of 3

5 Random Things Friday

It’s been one hell of a week, one of those that have both dragged (omg is it three day weekend time YET?) and gone fast (my to do list looks about the same as it did Monday – oops).  So it’s time to pull out the 5 random things!

1.  I am lovin’ my new hairdo.  I was so afraid shorter hair would mean high maintenance but I think it’s even easier to roll out of bed, spray some gel in it, tousle, and by the time I get to work it looks awesome.  Even after working out.  Or with bike ride helmet hair.  I luvz it.  Here is a better pic below with me sporting it curly AND my awesome tie dye hoodie I made AND the awesome yellow, green, and purple beaded necklace I made.  I R so crafty lately!

2.  I have some really really awesome news that is official and some other really really awesome news that is not yet official.  I think I am going to wait until they are BOTH official and share.  Let it suffice to say that it took about 2 years and a whole lot of hangin’ in there and a lot of faith in the universe to steer us in the right direction, but I do believe that patience here has been rewarded.  I’ve said too much.  Moving on.

3.  Plans this long weekend: we’re hosting a BBQ and having some friends over.  Zliten is cooking up three types of ribs, a friend is doing chicken, and I’m making my famous potato salad, veggie pasta salad, and dip (roasted garlic/feta/herb w/lowfat sour cream and some other goodies).  There will be some other random goodness – with our friends it’s always too much awesome food.  Other than that – cleaning and prepping for said occasion, a mellow night over at said friend with chicken’s house tonight, and just lots of relaxing and destressing.  Activity-wise, I hope to get in an EPIC bike ride (20 miles or over 15 at least) one day, more weights and yoga, and some fun stuff like a walking adventure or whatever happens.

4.  It has been mentally nice to not track every little calorie.  Really, really nice.  I’m interested to see the next weigh in and if I’ve lost weight, then maybe I’ll stick with it… I do have an unnatural curiousity to see how much my bike ride torched this morning cal-wise but I’m STAYING AWAY.

5.  My heel is pretty much recovered, but I think it’s time to bite the bullet and go in and hit RunTex or something and get them to take a peek at my gait and suggest a shoe for me.  I don’t think this running thing is a fad, and I might as well invest a little bit more in some shoes that will make me not have to limp around (even though they were just FUCKING FINE before when I trained and ran a half marathon in their previous version and now I can’t run a 5k – *shakes fist*).  I figure I can splurge on it once and if it doesn’t make a difference, I’ll be at Academy anyway in 6 months like I always am and give another brand a go…

Bonus: Zliten also chopped his hair – he said it was time.  It’s been long for as long as most of our friends now knew us so it was really weird to them, but since I’ve known him hair long and short, it’s just different.  I think it looks good!  I keep saying it will be fun when it’s longer on top and there is more to play with but it looks super cute now.  This is not the most flattering picture ever but it works:

Anyone else just DYING for it to be weekend time yet?  Out already and enjoying (I’ll try not to hate you too much)?  Big awesome plans?  Tell me your happy!

See ya in the early next week times…

Too Much Fun for Regrets

Y’all, I need a week off.  Not a week off being healthy.  Not a week off exercising.  A week off running, yeah, but that’s just to rest my (#$*%&ing heel.  Just a week off numbers, tracking, being neurotic, etc etc and so forth.

Last week was just one of those weeks – I didn’t go OVER my daily burn totals, but I certainly didn’t eat UNDER or at the low end like I have been.  The net result was maintaining from last week, which considering I’m careening right into that time of the month where I feel like a bag of water, but ultimately frustrating because it’s nearing the end of month 2 here, and I’m still hanging out right under 160.  That 3.3 lbs DB says I should be losing per month?  Notsomuch.

So I’m going to take a week off tracking formally.  I’m going to eat lots of veggies and fruits and healthy-feel-good-food and pay attention to how I feel.  I’m going to go for a lot of low impact swimming, biking, arc trainer, and other such similar things.  I rarely lose weight during this week of the month, so maybe it’s a clue from my body to just take a chill pill and relax a bit.

But without further ado, let’s crunch last week’s numbers:

Monday: 1820 in – 829 out (12 mile bike, 5k run) = 991

Tuesday: 1914 – 432 (30 mins DDR and abs) = 1482

Wednesday: 1913 – 532 (1 hour volleyball) = 1381

Thursday: 1634 – 381 (800m swim) = 1253

Friday: 1447 – 0 (rest) = 1447

Saturday: 2119 – 729 (5k race, obstacle course, abs) = 1390

Sunday: about 1400 – 0 (rest) = 1400

Avg calories in per day: 1749

Avg calories out per day: 414

Avg net calories per day: 1335

Avg deficit per day: 477, or just under 1 lb loss this week

Weight Monday morning: 159.8 (+0.2 from last week, -3.2 overall)

Let’s call it water weight and move on, shall we?

This week:

So I’m kinda playing it by ear.  I am taking the week off running, and I just haven’t had time/mindshare/desire to swim a lot, and I want to take it easy on the DDR as it is just a *little* aggravating on my heel, so I’m having a very bike heavy and arc trainer heavy week.  Here is the general plan, which I’ve already completed through Wed morning:

Monday: 11.5 mile bike ride

Tuesday: 14.5 mile bike ride (5 miles to work, 9.5 miles the long way home)

Wednesday: 40 mins arc trainer morning, abs/back tonight.

Thursday: no cardio, arms and legs, yoga.

Friday: bike commute, abs/back

Saturday: 30 mins arc trainer/DDR/walking adventure, arms and legs.

Sunday: morning bike ride, yoga.

Yeah, I’m gonna get flack for no days completely off.  But I am really really really enjoying this mellow moving a bit every day, especially when it’s part of my commute.  When I run and do crazy stuff I *need* my days off.  When I ride my bike and get to enjoy the outdoors I just want to do it more.  Even today’s wakeup session on the arc trainer was nice.  I really really really need to get back into weights and yoga, I’m having a feeling some of the heel issues I’m starting to see is from the lack of stretching, which sucks, because I should do that. And…even if I PLAN to workout both weekend days I usually end up ditching one.  So there.

As for eating, I’m not tracking.  Dailyburn keeps yelling at me for it but I will not repent.  I’m guessing that I’ve kept it around 1500 calories per day so far, give or take 100 either way.  I’ve consumed food if I was hungry, attempting to identify what my body needed (aka, last night, after a very meatless day and fairly light eating, I had a dinner of two turkey sausage patties, one grilled fish filet (not to be confused with the not-so-healthy filet o’ fish), a little leftover fiber spaghetti and marinara, a bagel thin and cream cheese, and a metric buttload of normandy veggies.  ‘Bout 600 calories in retrospect (which is normal for dinner), but who’s counting?  Apparently, I seem to not need to.

I did dip into the chocolate over the last few days.  One especially PMS-y day I think I might have consumed over 100 calories in chocolate.   Oops.  But honestly?  What I needed.  And considering most days I either abstain or maybe have ONE chocolate kiss?  Think I’m doing ok.  This weekend shouldn’t be too bad, minus our BBQ.  But I’m figuring on a nice bike ride that morning to pre-pay for my alcoholic transgressions, and then just be a reasonable human with the food.  A plan, I has it.

It will be interesting to see what the scale says next week.  Besides the whole water balloon thing going on around my belly, I’m feeling better.  Haven’t had the courage to try on the skinny jeans lately, but once I’m through zee week o bloat, I might get some moxie and do it and see.

Also, I signed up for the volleyball league at work.  It starts next week.  I couldn’t pass up how fun it was last week at the company fun day, plus how many calories it torched in an hour.  So I’ve got that, a potential mini-triathlon I’d like to do June 20th, an urban assault ride sometime in June I *probably* won’t do but was mentioned to me by a coworker that sounds like a blast, and I’m sure more stuff that will come across my radar here before I know it.

It seems that I am definitely having too much fun to regret not marathon training.  And I am so totally ok with that.  I’ve got 40 or so years until I *might* be too old to consider that as an option (though this is encouraging), so there’s time.

What are you having too much fun to not regret not doing this week?

EDIT: photos from the gladiator games are up!  Check it out if you’re interested – there is even one of me in there!

This is…

…what personal bests look like:

The little free 5k this weekend?  The one we *almost* ditched because we didn’t feel like it?  Because neither  of us had trained for it (we had both run ONCE in the last 2 weeks)?

Both significant personal bests.  25:10 for me (which beats my PB ever by about 1 minute, my race PB by 1:21), and 32:16 for Zliten, which is at least a few minutes better than he’s ever done.  It was just the right morning, the right course, and I am so very glad we decided to go!  I felt like I was bookin’ it, but since I rolled sans garmin (or timing watch even) and there were no mile markers, I had no clue.  I think that might have even helped.  Just kept going as fast as I could and keeping green tank top girl in my sights.  I even kicked hard and passed her at the end!

The obstacle course part?  Kinda fail.  I finished the 5k, cheered Zliten across the finish line, and then walked up and found out my wave was starting THEN.  I was already totally wasted from the run but I gave it my all.  I rocked the sprint, the army crawl, even the rope wall, but I just didn’t have the hand strength to get across the longest set of monkey bars ever.  I’m a little pissed about that.  I LOVED me some monkey bars as a kid.   I knew my time wouldn’t “count”, but I continued through the rest of the 10 and finished in about 6 minutes.  Suck!  Oh well, I was so pumped about earlier I just didn’t care too much.

The price I paid for a personal best?  I really aggravated my heel again (boo).   I think it’s a no run week again, I’m going to really work on stretching it (I’m starting to think it’s a muscle thing, not a bruis-y thing), icing it, and look into getting some new shoes, maybe even from a for-real running store that analyzes my gait.  I would like to have healthy feet again that don’t wuss out after a 5k.

More of the normal Monday stuff soon if life doesn’t continue with the too crazy (writing this while loading up stuff at work.  Yeah.  It sucks.).  Anyone else race this weekend?  Any one just do something super awesome non-race-y?  Think I look fierce there (ROAR!)?

Death By Fun

There are reasons I haven’t been around.

Pictures ganked from Zliten and B at work.  Hope they don’t mind. 🙂

It’s a hard life, I tell ya.  More soon.  I still have to get through a bunch of work stuff at work, explore a new place to try swimming, and the 5k race/gladiator games thing this weekend.  I think I might die by Saturday afternoon, but it would be a good death.

What’s up with you, bloggyland?

Snip Snip

So, with my whole messy long diatribe of frustration, I ended up having a really nice weekend and am just feeling kinda better about the whole ball of wax.  I am still a little frazzled about the swimming thing, but since my goal is really just to finish the first tri race, I think as long as I can get in soon it’ll be ok.  I started this week feeling pretty good about the scale and am going to work hard to keep the trend going.  I did a few other things I’ve been meaning to for a while – gave myself a manicure and pedicure (a lazy one, but one at that), and finally got my beads out and tinkered with some necklaces and bracelets.  And, most dramatically – Zliten gave me a pretty snazzy haircut:

It’s short enough right now, so I’m going to forgo the salon until it get a little longer and then see what’s what.

So, here’s last week by the numbers:

Monday: 1550 in – 775 out (12 mile bike and 20 mins arc trainer) = 775 (major oops, but I really really wasn’t hungrier)

Tuesday: 1439 in – 0 out (day off) = 1439

Wednesday: 1459 in – 450 out (45 mins DDR) = 1009

Thursday: 1604 in – 444 out (35 mins elliptical, 15 mins abs) = 1160

Friday: 1780 in – 471 out (10 mile bike ride) = 1309

Saturday: 1593 in – 600 out (60 mins DDR) = 993

Sunday: 1600 in – 339 out (2 mile walk, 4.5 mile bike) = 1261

This is probably my best week besides the first one – no wonder I’m starting off the week in a good spot!  If I can navigate 2 days of social situations where the food presented to me is not really under my control, I’ll be in good shape.

More Numbers:

Average intake per day: 1564

Average output per day: 439

Average net calories per day: 1125

Deficit: 687 calories per day, or about 1.5 lbs per week

Weight this morning: 159.6 (-1.6 from last week, -3.4 overall)

I’ll take it.  Moving on…

This week:

Monday: 12 mile bike, 2 mile run as slow as I need to (breaking the heel back in slooooowly)

Tuesday: 30 mins DDR

Wednesday: bike ride of some sort

Thursday: 30 min swim, weights

Friday: off

Saturday: 5k race, obstacle course gladiator thingee

Sunday: 30 min swim, weights

While I would *like* to take more days off this week, it’s just not in the cards.  I have a stupid busy social calendar for this week – Tuesday we’ve got one of those yelp events downtown, Wednesday we have a work team building thingee of tubing down the river, and then the last night of trivia of the season.  And if I’m going to imbibe, I’m gonna have to burn at least a little both days, so it’s really like one workout split into two.  Or that’s what I’m going to go with, at least.

I had planned to swim Sunday, but I just didn’t feel up for it that day.  Consuming about 50% of my (too low) calories the day before in alcohol did not a happy Quix make, and I’d already moved my ass that day with a 2 mile walk and 4.5 mile bike ride, so I called it even.  I was going to go Tuesday but I forgot about the event.  So now, it’s Thursday and damned if I can keep doing this another week *grrr*.  I WILL SWIM!!!

Other than that, looking forward to doing the 5k race and obstacle course thing – apparently it’s a contest that’s also a tryout for American Gladiators?  Not as if I have the stuff to make it, but hey, I’ll give it a go.  It’s a very running lite week, and I don’t think I’ve ever raced a 5k with this little training the weeks before, but it’s a good experiment.  Maybe I’ll be so rested that I’ll PR!

Goals for this week:

-Be strong and consume reasonably through Tuesday and Wednesday.

-Get a mother fucking swim in this week.

-Continue this nice little second wind I’ve caught.  No more 160s!!  Roar!

-Ease back into running slowly and don’t hurt myself.

What’s up for you this week?

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